


Remembering Something that No One Else Can

by queensburner



Category: Steins;Gate
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Temporary Character Death, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27449041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensburner/pseuds/queensburner
Summary: After all, only two things in his life had ever been constant: Mayuri and DK Pepper.
Relationships: Okabe Rintarou | Hououin Kyouma/Makise Kurisu
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Remembering Something that No One Else Can

**Author's Note:**

> This one is quite different from my usual stuff, but the idea came to me in a dream, and I just couldn't ignore it

He could swear that he felt his heart stop the first time he saw the light leave Mayuri’s eyes. Every time he saw it happen–by a bullet, a car crash, spontaneous cardiac arrest–he felt more and more empty, like each of her deaths took something out from inside of him until he was hollow. Heart, lungs, ribs, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidneys, he ran through every organ he had ever had to memorize for an anatomy course, and he could check one off for every failed rescue attempt until there was nothing left inside of him but empty space.

After all, only two things in his life had ever been constant: Mayuri and DK Pepper.

So when the former was wrenched from his grasp time and time again he threw himself into the latter. He could almost wax poetic about the taste, how its spiced complexities reminded him of his lab. He grew used to the feeling of the cold liquid filling up his stomach. He grew used to the sensation of his bloated stomach standing out from his flat, angular hips and thighs.

Then Christina–Kurisu, that is–began helping him in his attempts to save Mayuri, and they would drink it together. They would spend late nights in comfortable silence and drink their way through a few cans of the soda, and he would almost feel whole again.

And then another D-mail would be reversed, and Kurisu would forget it all. Okabe would be faced with yet another challenge to overcome, and to her it would be like none of it ever happened.

But she would believe him every time. They would spend more nights drinking that sugary sweet drink together, and their combined genius would buy them just a little bit more time the next time around. Every time he was left astounded anew, every time unsure whether the rush he felt was because of her astounding brilliance or the nostalgic taste of the DK Pepper. He imagined that, if he were to tell her, she would say something about how the dopaminergic pathway of his brain in the new world line hadn’t yet been exposed to the combination of her and the drink, how he was like an addict being exposed to the first hit of their substance of choice over and over again.

Being forced to choose between her and Mayuri had nearly killed him.

In this new world line, the one where she was dead, he felt as hollow as he had when Mayuri had died. Maybe worse since he couldn’t even tell anyone that he missed her without sounding like even more of a madman than he already did, and at least in those world lines he could hug the soft edges of Mayuri’s upa pillow that still smelled like her. So he turned to the only thing left that could remind him of Kurisu.

“You sure guzzle that stuff like it’s going out of style,” he remembered Mayuri saying to him, in one of those alternate world lines. But at least Kurisu was still alive in that one.

He drank the DK Pepper like it was the only thing keeping him alive. If he was an addict, he was chasing the high he felt when he was with her. He drank it until his stomach was full, and he was sure he couldn’t take another drop, and then the bubbles of carbon dioxide would push him even further beyond that. He stopped visiting the May Queen, with the soda replacing the coffee as his main source of caffeine, and even then he didn’t stop drinking it at night, because his dreams only brought on visions of her.

The swollen feeling that it gave him became permanent. His stomach bulged out all the time, only now his chest, hips, and thighs went with it as the pounds piled on. He watched the number on the bathroom scale climb like he had once watched the numbers on the divergence meter, and at least he felt like his efforts to bring himself closer to Kurisu were doing something.

Maybe that was why he felt so lost when Suzuha appeared with a second chance. Up to that point he had felt something, at least, but if he saw someone he loved die right in front of him even one more time. . . he wasn’t sure he would ever feel again.

Or maybe he was hesitating because he was worried what she would think.

Kurisu wasn’t a shallow woman by any means, but he couldn’t deny that he worried that his new weight might put her off. After all, his lab coat could barely button over his pot belly.

But in the end, he had been talked into it. If there was any chance at saving the woman he loved, he knew he had to take it. He failed once, but then he succeeded, and the will of Steins;Gate had even brought them back together, but through it all, his insecurity never stopped gnawing at him.

She came to the lab the day before her flight back to America. Daru and Mayuri were both in class, and it would be their first time alone together since he gave her the lab member pin.

When she offered him a can of soda, he hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Mayuri told me you love this stuff.”

Okabe stammered and reached for his phone, but his hands found their way to his distended stomach instead. Kurisu’s brow furrowed.

“Are you. . . insecure?”

He fumbled again for an answer, reaching for his mad scientist alter-ego like a shelf that was just a little bit too high up, but she interrupted before he could further embarrass himself.

“One of those dreams,” she said, “those hazy memories of a different world line. We’re caught in the rain. Both of us get soaked through, and your lab coat gets torn. We argue back and forth, both of us call the other scrawny, stuff like that. It never quite made sense to me, but. . .” she trailed off.

Okabe adjusted his lab coat around himself, trying to cover as much of himself as he would. “As expected of an astute mind such as yours,” he conceded. “I’ve not always appeared as I do before you now.” He dropped his voice lower. “The truth is, I drank a lot of that soda in the time I thought you were dead. As a result, I guess I gained quite a bit of weight.”

Kurisu's face flushed, and her eyes darted away. “B-because of me?”

He took a step closer, and her gaze returned to him. “All because of you.”

Her hands braced against his burgeoning love handles, and Okabe fought the urge to shy away. The air between them seemed to crackle with electricity, and he prayed to every deity in every world line out there that he wasn’t overstepping as he brought his lips to hers in a kiss that tasted sweeter than all the sugar he had drank in the intervening time combined.

When Kurisu pulled away, her cheeks were flaming a redder shade than her hair. “I’ll miss you,” she managed.

“I’ll miss you too, Christina.”

“That’s not my name,” she protested, but she was smiling this time. She wrapped her arms around his larger figure, and they stayed in their warm embrace. In less than a day there would be thousands of kilometers of ocean between them, but Okabe wasn’t worried. He had crossed time for her, and he would do it again.


End file.
